2025 Security for Space Systems (3S) Conference fosters information exchange among researchers and practitioners on cutting-edge research and innovations in space systems security. The 2025 3S Conference will take place in ESA ESTEC, Noordwijk (The Netherlands), from 4 to 6 November 2025. The target audience includes everyone interested in the different aspects of space systems security.

Authors are encouraged to write the abstract and introduction of their paper in a way that makes the results accessible and compelling to a general security researcher. All submissions will be reviewed by the Program Committee and accepted submissions will be published by IEEE in the Proceedings of the conference.

Innovative and research-driven submissions are solicited in, but not limited to, the following topics:

Prospective authors are invited to submit high-quality papers reporting original results under the broad theme of security space systems, and in all areas identified above. Best Conference Papers and Best Student Papers will be awarded.

We welcome Academia, Industry, Agencies, Organizations, and others to submit on the aforementioned topics (submitted papers should not include vendor pitch though; for demonstrating commercial innovations, products and capabilities, please use the exhibition).

Paper review information

The submission should be original, and not published elsewhere. See also the “Concurrent submissions” section below.

2025 3S conference will have two review cycles: a fall submission cycle and a summer submission cycle. All submissions must be received by 11:59 PM AoE (UTC-12) on the day of the corresponding deadline.

For each submission to any of the two review cycles, papers may be accepted or rejected. Paper rejected in the first submission cycle can be resubmitted to the second review cycle if the authors addressed the concerns of the reviewers.

We encourage authors of accepted papers to make software and data artifacts publicly available to the community. While artifacts are optional, their availability will be positively considered during paper evaluation.

Authors of accepted papers must ensure that their papers will be presented at the conference according to the conference participation policy.

Important dates

First review cycle

Second review cycle

Concurrent submissions

Contributions must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to other conferences or journals. Concurrent submissions in multiple venue will result in desk rejection. The Program Committee may share information with other conference chairs and journal editors, as well as use plagiarism detection software, to detect such cases.

Ethical Considerations

Ethical conduct in research is essential for public trust in science. Ethical compliance is part of the evaluation in the review process, and papers not adhering to ethical standards will be rejected. Ethical concerns vary by project, so researchers should consider ethics as integral to their work, just like evaluation and method design.

While each situation is unique, general principles apply, including beneficence, justice, respect for persons, and the law. Researchers should detail measures to prevent harm if a method could affect systems or users, such as jamming tests.

For human subjects research, defined as research involving identifiable humans or their data, researchers must comply with relevant laws and review standards, such as IRB approval in the U.S. In this case, authors should add a note in the paper on the approval.

If the contribution presents an important vulnerability that can cause harm, the authors should report or at least discuss their plan for responsible disclosure. The Program Committee reserves the right to reject a submission if insufficient evidence was presented that ethical or relevant legal concerns were appropriately addressed.

Anonymous submissions

The peer review will be conducted using a double-blind process. Author names and affiliations should not appear in the paper. The authors should make a reasonable effort not to reveal their identities or institutional affiliations in the paper (e.g., reference to previous work should be in third person or masked for review). Submissions that violate these requirements will be rejected without review.

If you are uncertain about how to anonymize your submission, whether or not your submissions meet these guidelines, or have specific questions about the guidelines, please contact the program chairs well in advance of the submission deadline.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors and Program Committee members are required to indicate any conflict of interest. PC members that have a conflict of interest with a paper will be excluded from the evaluation of that paper.

Full/short papers

Full paper submissions to Security for Space Systems conference can be up to 8 pages in the IEEE conference style, excluding the bibliography and well-marked appendices, and up to 12 pages in total.

We also encourages the submission of short papers with a length of up to 5 pages (including bibliography and appendices), which describe work-in-progress research with initial results and their evaluation.

All papers must be thoroughly anonymized for double-blind reviewing, and they should be written in English.

Detailed submission instructions will be made available as the deadline approaches.

Submission guidelines

All papers must be submitted electronically through the link provided below.

Only PDF files will be accepted. Submissions must be prepared using the following IEEE template: https://www.ieee.org/conferences/publishing/templates.html. The document should adhere to the formatting guidelines specified in the template, including font size, margins, and column layout.

Submissions will open shortly.